Excerpt from The Law of the Motion Picture Industry a Lecture

In 1440, however, a concession was made, allowing the people to use playing-cards on holidays. In England, Parliament passed a law forbidding their use by common people except on holidays. In other words, the fact that the people had found something that amused them was a sign that they had been lured away from virtue by the devil.

In view of the confusion of public mind, haste of legislative body and hurried decisions by the courts that have followed the rise of the motion picture industry, it seems but right that we should take a survey of what is the law, as it is being applied to this new industry, and what relation that law has to the fundamental laws and principles, without which there cannot be built any superstructure that would seek to take care of new conditions.

What is a motion picture? Professor Hugo Munster-berg said: "The massive outer world has lost its weight; it has been freed from place, time and casuality and it has been clothed in the forms of our own consciousness. The mind has triumphed over matter and the pictures reel on with the case of musical tones. It is a superb enjoyment which no other art can furnish us."

Coming at a time when the cost of most amusement was high, the motion picture was at first a plaything, but it is now accepted as one of the large factors in the history of our day, with educational and scientific possibilities that had not been dreamed of. Every day at least ten million people in the United States go to make up the largest audience and the largest record of audiences that the world has ever known.

In a previous lecture, Judge Charles M. Hough, an able jurist, told you that Commercial Law is composed of customs of merchants, grafted on the customary law of agricultural and pastoral people - the crystallized rules of many generations of trades - all of which is finally accepted by the courts as general law.

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